Hello, I've noticed that some members of my flock have been making wheezing sounds like an asthmatic person might make. I'm not sure if I'm being paranoid or not. It started in one bird and now there are a few making the noises. Is this a respitory problem, or are they just chickens making chicken noises I've never heard before?

1) What type of bird , age and weight. The first bird was a BR, about 30 weeks old, unsure of the weight
2) What is the behavior, exactly. Wheezing noises in place of clucking. Also her comb has a little bit of scabbing on it
3) How long has the bird been exhibiting symptoms? two days
4) Are other birds exhibiting the same symptoms? yes, it's hard to tell who else is making the sound, but I think at least one other is
5) Is there any bleeding, injury, broken bones or other sign of trauma. slight scabbing on her comb
6) What happened, if anything that you know of, that may have caused the situation. I switched bedding from sand to pine shavings this week
7) What has the bird been eating and drinking, if at all. layer crumble (layer pellets before this week, bought the wrong bag)
8) How does the poop look? Normal? Bloody? Runny? etc. fine so far
9) What has been the treatment you have administered so far? No treatment
10 ) What is your intent as far as treatment? For example, do you want to treat completely yourself, or do you need help in stabilizing the bird til you can get to a vet? I will do it myself if I can, if I need to I can seek vet assistance
11) If you have a picture of the wound or condition, please post it. It may help. no picture of wheezing, could get picuture of the comb if you think it's related
12) Describe the housing/bedding in use.6 birds in an old garden shed. Just changed the bedding from sand to pine shavings. Window is cracked at night for ventalation. Earlier this week there was a high build up of amonia, which usually never happens, so we started to open the window more. The amonia is what triggered us to switch bedding.

My chickens were wheezing, one sounded like he was drowining. The vet recommended quarintine for the ones showing respiratory distress, he gave 4 of them shots, and gave me enough syringes of the medication for the second dose 7 days later. These I kept in the basement 14 days (all Large Fowl). The other 15 were given Tetracycline in their water daily for 14 days. The illness is viral, but they had developed secondary bacterial infections.

Additionally, I hand wiped each of the fours faces daily for several days as they passed through the crud stage, and for the most severe one, I added a humidifer to help keep the crud liquified. I also had feed them and watered them with spoons or syringes until they were eating and drinking sufficiently on their own.

Quote:I use a warm, wet rag to clean their faces. The warm water can help relieve the stuffiness as well. Also, if you have syringes, you can use that to get some water around the nostrils and mouth and wipe that out as well. I ended up using clean rolls of shop cloths (like Bounty), and just throwing them away. Couldn't bring myself to think about cleaning rags and reusing them.